We've so many great poetry titles coming to you this autumn! I can't wait to introduce you to these two first full collections!
Please join us in Cardiff for the launch of Hey Bert by Roberto Pastore and Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks by Kittie Belltree.
I love Cardiff MADE so much I got married there earlier this year, and the event is free to you all, with some free wine and then an open cafe bar for the evening.
9 October, 7.30pm, Cardiff MADE, 41 Lochaber St, Cardiff CF24 3LS (Arrive at 7 for a 7.30 ish start of readings and a short Q&A).
Here's the Facebook Event Page
Susie x
Join us at Cardiff MADE gallery to launch two debut full collections of poetry! With readings from both poets, short Q&As and Parthian books for sale. Free entry, some free wine followed by an open cafe bar and a chance to meet the poets / get books signed. 7pm arrival for 7.30pm ish start. Bert will be familiar to local book lovers as the man behind Bert's Picks and the Cult Book section in Waterstones. I have known him for his poetry for a long time too and I'm so pleased to be bringing out a book by him after years of asking if he'd finished one yet ;) Kittie will be travelling from west Wales where I'll meet her in person for the very first time but I adored her poetry collection from the first reading and I can't wait to share it with you all.
About Hey Bert:
‘“I never/did anything with much oomph” declares the speaker of Roberto Pastore's poem “The Incoming.” It's an interesting statement, because the poet's debut collection, Hey Bert, does everything with oomph. The language of the poems cracks and fizzles with energy and, from the opening “Salutation”, the poet proves himself adept at dragging the reader by the collar into his world. Humour and a spoken immediacy smash up against a great lyricism in poems which are vibrant and alive. This book won't lie quietly on a shelf: open it and a human being leaps out, drinking oat milk, speculating on the nature of time, offering memories, saying Hey. It's a pleasure to meet him, and a joy to read these poems.’ – Jonathan Edwards
'Bert's writing, quite simply, makes me happy. Jealous but happy.' – Crystal Jeans
‘Wow. One of the best things I've read in a long time […] Bert is clearly a deliciously fresh and exciting talent, you’ve unearthed a diamond there ... I thought it was ace.’ – Rhian Elizabeth
Hey Bert is a clarion call to open our eyes a little bit wider, of poetry’s capacity to find new ways of looking at our own lives. Poems that speak intensely of the everyday, of nostalgia, friendship and love, the body, the sacred, all seen through Pastore’s unique, eccentric filter of spirit animals, pop-culture, dreams and astrology.
Evoking John Giorno, Anne Waldman, and Julia Heyward, Pastore’s work draws from performance art, confessional poetry, mantra, and folklore to create a voice both fiercely contemporary and somehow out of time.
https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/pre-order/products/hey-bert
About Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks:
‘Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks offers the reader poems of finely wrought beauty that contain a hitherto silenced personal history. Belltree joins the tradition of women writers who challenge the parental command and defy the scar upon the tongue in order to speak out with eloquence and exemplary strength of mind.’ – Helen May Williams
‘With dramatic poise and timing, Kittie Belltree’s poems lure the reader to follow her prescient, unflinching gaze as she explores definitions of home and the relationships we have with the people and objects contained by four walls. By turns witty and sophisticated, her writing shivers with a suggestion of unease that is compelling.’ – Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch
In her debut collection, Kittie Belltree explores fractured connections of self, family and home. At the heart of these poems are a daughter’s fraught relationships with a mother who grew up in National Socialist Germany and her half-Japanese father, who survived three years as a POW in Czechoslovakia. These dark themes are counterbalanced by moments of comical absurdity and delightful domestic chaos.
https://www.parthianbooks.com/collections/pre-order/products/sliced-tongue-and-pearl-cufflinks
